Macbeth, Music, Mathematics, and Teaching: Can a Good Teacher Teach Anything from Anything Else?

I recently posted about Anne Smith’s classes creating musical compositions to represent characters in Macbeth. I think you should take another look at the comments on Anne’s post, as the discussion has moved in several different directions since then.

After many comments discussing the process and merits of using music to think more deeply about a literary work, Gary Stager asked this question:

So, do you think one lesson from this experience might be that a good teacher can teach anything from anything else?

The students had some interesting thoughts about that. Some of those thoughts touched on the subject of mathematics, including this comment:

In math, there is one answer and one answer only.

That led me to ask a question about whether the students all agreed with that statement and asked them to think about a couple of "math" problems. Since then Gary chimed in briefly again about math, and Sylvia Martinez has stopped by a couple of times to add to the discussion, but the students have really done the bulk of the commenting.

I think it would be worth your time to read through the discussion (set aside some time, as there are currently 194 comments) and perhaps add a comment with your perspective on the various topics.